| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
The drama ultimately retreats to safer, duller, more illogical, and more reactionary impulses and stereotypes.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
But the single most compelling performance may belong to Australian actor Guy Pearce.
|
| 70 |
LA Weekly
Worth it, though, for the conviction and ramrod-erect bearing that pros Jackson and Jones bring to their roles.
|
| 70 |
Rolling Stone
Friedkin turns on the juice and Jones and Jackson let it rip.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Works splendidly as a courtroom thriller about military values as long as you don't expect it to seriously consider those values.
|
| 63 |
Charlotte Observer
The setup doesn't make sense from the get-go.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
As mechanical and predictable as a cuckoo clock, it shouldn't work half as well as it does.
|
| 60 |
Newsweek
Jones even manages to save this somewhat tiring film.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
Friedkin does a superb job of serving up the well-appointed script by James Webb and Stephen Gaghan.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
Written with such murderous gravity, certainty and gloomy solemnity - such an absence of real life or feeling - that it tends to kill our interest.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
The sentiments here are thoroughly semper fi, but the result occasionally works at cross-purposes.
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
This military courtroom drama is full of questions, but woefully short of answers.
|
| 50 |
Film.com
What rescues the movie, time and again, is the strength of Jones' and Jackson's performances.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
It's bottom-feeder entertainment wrapped up in high-minded airs.
|
| 50 |
Variety
A broad and obvious approach to ambiguous material that's virtually all plot mechanics with little nuance or characterization.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Passable, moderately diverting dramatic entertainment.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
Sometimes, movies would work better if you couldn't see them.
|
| 50 |
The New York Times
There's not much going on here, and there is little suspense.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
It's a deftly executed crowd-pleaser, but it's dishonest to the core.
|
| 40 |
Washington Post
It is the verdict of this court that it be led to a stockade reserved exclusively for cheap, pandering movies and duly shot.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
It's amazing the filmmakers never really concern themselves with satisfying the audience's rules of engagement.
|
| 38 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
A casualty of its own clumsy storytelling.
|
| 38 |
Boston Globe
Strenuously as it tries, and pulse-poundingly successful as the embassy rescue scene is, Rules of Engagement never engages us.
|
| 38 |
Mr. Showbiz
Richard T. Jameson
Pearce is shot in such distorting closeups that he looks like an overdeveloped athlete who's been getting steroid injections in his cheeks.
|
| 35 |
TNT RoughCut
Formulaic and pretty darn plodding.
|
| 33 |
Portland Oregonian
Barry Johnson
Plays like an episode of "JAG," the naval courtroom TV series. A L-O-N-G episode.
|
| 30 |
Film.com
It just doesn't work. Worse, it's downright offensive.
|
| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
By the time the film plummets to its rock bottom, we find ourselves in a flag-waving no-brainer of the first order, and one of the most thoroughly confused morality tales in recent memory.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Examiner
A wildly dull, predictable script whose holes seem to be courtesy of random sniper fire.
|
| 25 |
Christian Science Monitor
Spoiled by its simplistic portrait of people from the Mideast as incorrigibly violent and untrustworthy.
|
| 10 |
Village Voice
The clichés lap like bay waves, from the salutes to the brotherly brawl to the olive-oil tear streaks semipermanently painted down Jackson's cheeks.
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